Can I Add Chapters And A Dvd Menu To Converted Files?

[NICABM]

Hi all,

 

I am using Roxio Toast 11 to add chapters and a menu to an .mp4 video file. However, I am not physically burning the DVDs myself, I need to send a converted file to an outside company because we are burning over 200 DVDs.

 

My question is, will the file I send contain chapters / a DVD menu?

 

Thanks in advance for the help!

[theoldarchiver]

When you author a DVD-Video with chapters and menu(s), the output can be a disc image file instead of a physical disc.

If this duplication company accepts .toast disc image files, you could send that file which has everything included.

[Rxiotrainman]

I am new to TOASTER 11 and have "shared to media browser" a movie from iMovie 11 (9.0.9) with 23 chapter markers. I see from other postings that titles cannot be edited in TOASTER and the title I added to the chapters in iMovie have are not visible except as chapter number. The chapters in the menu show up as 0, 1,2 etc giving no indication of the chapter content.

 

I am using a customize menu screen that does not display thumbnails. The chapter 0 that precedes the 1st video chapter is blank (black screen). Is it possible to create a screen in some format in which I can list the chapter number and text so the viewer can select a chapter and know what they will be seeing (until such time as Roxio adds the edit feature)?

[tsantee]

I am using a customize menu screen that does not display thumbnails. The chapter 0 that precedes the 1st video chapter is blank (black screen). Is it possible to create a screen in some format in which I can list the chapter number and text so the viewer can select a chapter and know what they will be seeing (until such time as Roxio adds the edit feature)?

I am uncertain about what you created. There are multiple chapters shown on each menu page when including the Scene menu. When you say the first chapter is a black screen I don't get how there is only one chapter on that screen. Apparently you're using one of the text-only menu styles. You mention customizing the screen so I'm guessing you dropped in a different background. If this covers up the text you can change the text color to make it appear against the background.

 

If chapter descriptions are critical then I suggest splitting the movie into multiple titles and mark the continuous play checkbox. The downside to this is there is a slight pause (freeze frame) when the DVD player moves from the end of one title to the start of the next. You also could create a DVD that has one title which is the entire movie and additional titles that are individual chapters.

 

I don't know what you mean by Toast adding the edit feature. If you mean Toast adding the ability to create descriptive scene menus, I'm confident that won't happen. Toast was designed from the get-go to have very basic menu information.

[Rxiotrainman]

I am uncertain about what you created. There are multiple chapters shown on each menu page when including the Scene menu. When you say the first chapter is a black screen I don't get how there is only one chapter on that screen. Apparently you're using one of the text-only menu styles. You mention customizing the screen so I'm guessing you dropped in a different background. If this covers up the text you can change the text color to make it appear against the background.

 

If chapter descriptions are critical then I suggest splitting the movie into multiple titles and mark the continuous play checkbox. The downside to this is there is a slight pause (freeze frame) when the DVD player moves from the end of one title to the start of the next. You also could create a DVD that has one title which is the entire movie and additional titles that are individual chapters.

 

I don't know what you mean by Toast adding the edit feature. If you mean Toast adding the ability to create descriptive scene menus, I'm confident that won't happen. Toast was designed from the get-to to have very basic menu information.

 

I guess I am just learning how limited this expensive piece of software really is.. In any case, I going to try the following. In iMovie, before "sharing to mediabrowser" I am going to add a still picture as a chapter with the chapter number and titles. The viewer will have to go back to the main menu to select the chapter they want to view but at least, I think, it won't be WAGing which chapter to select.

 

Thank you for you quick reply

[tsantee]

I guess I am just learning how limited this expensive piece of software really is.. In any case, I going to try the following. In iMovie, before "sharing to mediabrowser" I am going to add a still picture as a chapter with the chapter number and titles. The viewer will have to go back to the main menu to select the chapter they want to view but at least, I think, it won't be WAGing which chapter to select.

 

Thank you for you quick reply

That's clever but I'm still confused. The main menu has titles. The Scene menu shows chapters. If the idea is that the thumbnail image that marks the chapters in the Scene menu displays the still photo-with-text from iMovie, it will appear very small so it won't be very readable.

 

Maybe you should use something other than Toast for this project. I believe iDVD supports text with chapters. While Apple no longer sells iDVD it is included in the boxed iLife sets from the past. You should be able to find it somewhere. I have an application called CaptyDVD 2 that supports text in chapters but it doesn't work in OS 10.7 or 10.8. If you have an earlier OS you can find it at www.pixela-1.com. You might also go to macupdate.com and search for "DVD authoring".

[Rxiotrainman]

That's clever but I'm still confused. The main menu has titles. The Scene menu shows chapters. If the idea is that the thumbnail image that marks the chapters in the Scene menu displays the still photo-with-text from iMovie, it will appear very small so it won't be very readable.

 

Maybe you should use something other than Toast for this project. I believe iDVD supports text with chapters. While Apple no longer sells iDVD it is included in the boxed iLife sets from the past. You should be able to find it somewhere. I have an application called CaptyDVD 2 that supports text in chapters but it doesn't work in OS 10.7 or 10.8. If you have an earlier OS you can find it at www.pixela-1.comyou know what I . You might also go to macupdate.com and search for "DVD authoring".

 

Thank you.. I am on 10.8.3 so iLife etc is not an option that I can tell. Now I guess I am confused about titling etc. so I need to do some experimenting. I'll let you know what I learn as I go. To save wasting DVD media I gues I should produce a DVD image and see what it looks like in the software DVD player on the Mac but does it reflect what I would see on a DVD disc player?

[tsantee]

Thank you.. I am on 10.8.3 so iLife etc is not an option that I can tell. Now I guess I am confused about titling etc. so I need to do some experimenting. I'll let you know what I learn as I go. To save wasting DVD media I gues I should produce a DVD image and see what it looks like in the software DVD player on the Mac but does it reflect what I would see on a DVD disc player?

Yes, the mounted disc image appears with DVD Player the same as it appears when played from the disc on your TV. As for iDVD, it works fine on OS 10.8.3. The only thing I'm uncertain about is if the installer works.

 

When you add a video to the Toast window you've created a Title. Toast allows up to three lines of text with each title and you can custom select the video frame that is shown in the thumbnail image. When you increase the number of titles that are on each menu page, the number of lines of text decreases. You can select the maximum number of titles that appear on a menu page in the window for customizing the menu. Toast automatically puts up to six titles on a menu page when using a style that has a thumbnail. It may put more on the text-only menus.

 

The optional Scene menu pages are thumbnails (or digits only with text menu styles). I think there are about a dozen chapters shown per menu page and this can't be modified. When Scene menus are included, playing a Title automatically opens the Scene menu where the viewer has to click on the first chapter to start playing the movie from the beginning. The thumbnail images in the Scene menu are selected by Toast and can't be changed.

 

You could print a chapter menu guide to accompany the DVD in which you describe each chapter in some detail.

 

Something you may know is that you can mark specific chapter locations in Toast. When you mark them in iMovie you want Toast to automatically use those (which is the Toast default). But you do have the option to mark chapters in Toast. That feature is a recent addition.

[Rxiotrainman]

Did some experimenting over the weekend.. Figured out the thumbnail and titling but also noticed something odd. I let TOASTER use chapter markers that I placed during assembling of the clips in iMovie. In TOASTER if I click on manual chapter editing and add 1 chapter at the beginning of the movie and leave the iMovie chapters untouched it seems I can select a specific frame as a thumbnail for each chapter. If I am right this makes chapter selection when viewing the DVD easy since each chapter starts with a view of a closed stage door as the auto selected frame.

 

I had another thought... The movie is assembled from multiple video clips. I looked at using the CONVERT function to assemble the movie. if I select DVD video it seems the results is very very large file (23min yielded 4.7+GB). I'll try a few other options and see if that works better. Any advice on how to assemble 2+ hours of large (960x540) video clips (23) into a single DVD which seems to be routine for the iMovie - Toaster video combination?

 

The adventure continues...

[tsantee]

Good discoveries. You mention using the convert function to assemble the movie. I think of the convert function being Toast's Convert window which is for creating a new video file in a different format. How is that used for assembling? There is a Merge clips... command in the Edit menu (top of screen menu bar) but that is not active except for one or two video formats and I'm not sure which one(s). DVD video in the Video window should show a 23-minute movie taking less than 1.5 GB at the Best setting. Toast can fit about 3 hours of video on a single-layer DVD, although the quality begins to decline after about 2 hours of video. I don't know why the space-remaining indicator is giving wrong information. You can choose to ignore it and select Save as Disc Image which will do it right, or you can try trashing the Toast plist and prefs files in your User>Library>Preferences folder and relaunch Toast to see if that fixes the glitch.

[Rxiotrainman]

Well my first video project is done!! Thanks for all the help and advice. I learned a lot. I still could not resolve the size issue that CONVERT presented but I did not use CONVERT so I'll tackle that one another time. The video came out really nice (IMHO). The next project will be next week but it will be a much smaller one. This video is 2 1/4 hours and has 23 chapters. Kinda big for a 1st project. I did my experiments on a subset of the project clips. Anyway it was fun (mostly). I am glad I am using OSX (a.k.a enhanced BSD UNIX). 'till next time!!